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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24522244">because it is bitter, and because it is my heart</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/drawlight'>drawlight (snagov)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Witcher (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Desperation, First Time, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Pining, Porn with Feelings, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, thank god you're alive</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:40:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,056</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24522244</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/drawlight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“You stupid fucking idiot,” Geralt hisses. “You could have been killed.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>415</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Abby's Witcher Collection</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>because it is bitter, and because it is my heart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>In the desert<br/>
</em>
  <em>I saw a creature, naked, bestial,<br/>
</em>
  <em>Who, squatting upon the ground,<br/>
</em>
  <em>Held his heart in his hands,<br/>
</em>
  <em>And ate of it.<br/>
</em>
  <em>I said, “Is it good, friend?”<br/>
</em>
  <em>"It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;</em>
</p><p><em>"But I like it<br/>
</em><em>“Because it is bitter,<br/>
</em><em>“And because it is my heart.”<br/>
</em>Stephen Crane, <em>In the Desert</em></p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>How heavy is stone?</p><p>How quickly does it drop through the river, sink to the bottom? How heavy is it in your pockets, tucked there like a love letter, weighing you down? How heavy is stone? Tell me now, how quickly does it sink? It is sometimes said that Geralt of Rivia is made of stone. Grey and weather-beaten, impervious to rain and feeling. His face doesn't move, his hands are steady. A wall, built of shale and marble. Impassible. </p><p>Cold to the touch.</p><p>It's cold in the tavern. Late March, winter still clinging to the back of the wind like a bad habit. Geralt scowls at nothing in particular. Sometimes his long hands trouble at a pint. He picks at the threadbare black fabric of his trousers, pulls at the little wrinkles in his sleeves. Sometimes his gnarled hands travel up, up, further up, and trace along the fault-line scar on his shoulder, hidden there beneath night-dark fabric and leather pauldrons. This sealed-up scar, this knot of tissue. (He had expected to die in a fight. In any fight. A scar is nothing, <em>nothing</em>. Just a small trophy, just a little bit of weight.) Look at the mess of him, tucked in this corner to brood. His pale hair is long, far longer now than usual. He hasn't bothered to cut it. Tell me, what's the point? There's no Delilah here to drag the knife across, to take all the blame. Geralt could find himself bound to a kitchen chair and no one to hold the shears.</p><p>His wide-fingered hands splay out over the varnished wood of the counter. Pockmarked with scars. The nails clipped short. There's no blood under the nails, not this time. <em>(Might have been yours. It was yours for a long time.) </em></p><p>Doesn't matter. (Nothing matters. Not to a stone wall. Nothing matters but time, ticking off the years.) These days, the hours run long. Geralt doesn't do much at all but sit at this barstool, here in this low-lit pub with the greasy smell of Scotch eggs, stuck here in the sour stench of spilled beer. Nothing but sit here, staring at the wall or fumbling at the paper, drinking the day away in a rotten pub. His skin is thinner, lines and bags at the eyes. He hasn't gotten prettier in the passing years, no. Still a smear-stain of a man, still with hair like spiderwebs and jealous-yellow eyes. He isn't eating well (he rarely ever has). This is a nothing tavern in a nothing town. His usual spot as a smear on a barstool at the local pub. The half-broken concrete steps up to the pub smell like piss and vinegar, the usual muck. The air has the sour salt and fish-stench of the usual wharfing town. Nearby coalmines stain the air a strange yellow sometimes. </p><p>Damnation troubles his thoughts. There's a touch-worn coin in his fingers, flipping back and forth. He had carried Jaskier with these same hands, same fingers. Dijnn-cursed, yes, and gasping for air.</p><p>The bard's skin had been cold already, an icebox in his arms. His blood had been scorching (hot as stars). Jaskier had twitched in his hold, his coin-silver eyes lost in the haze of hypovolemic shock. Later, after Jaskier had been dropped into a sleep of a faint black nothingness, Geralt had taken his bootknife and picked blood and vomit out from beneath his fingernails. The blood had caked into his tunic, the red lost against the black, unseen. A secret against his skin, only known by the stiffness of the fabric. Even weeks later, Jaskier and he long parted down separate roads, the stiffened tunic had scratched at Geralt's neck.</p><p>A secret. Geralt takes nothing with him of Jaskier but his blood. </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>"I need no one. And the last thing I want is someone needing me."</em>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The coin trips between his fingers. Two-sided, a Janus-faced question. Flip it, find out what the answer is. Geralt knows it always lands on the same side for him. Choice is not his to have. Fate is not his to tempt. He is a Witcher. A wall forged in steel and bone. Keep the garden safe, keep the monsters out. Simple, really. </p><p>Monsters again.</p><p>This one still lingers in his memory, a phantom in his periphery. Some monsters have sharp teeth, some aim to kill. Those are the simple ones. Straightforward. You always know where you stand with a charging wolf. You always know where you stand with poisoned fangs.</p><p>This one had been different.</p><p>There had been a splash in the water. He'd stopped suddenly, tangling his ankles in surprise. Looking out at the sea. Blinking a little, There had been a woman there. Strange and quiet, staring at him. She hadn't blinked. Her bare feet in the water, her drenched dress. Mottled skin, pale and unpleasant. The color of the underbellies of frogs. Maggot-light. Geralt had grimaced at her sunken eyes, her open mouth, the way her hands pressed into the water a little, over and over again, as if she were trying to pull herself out. Not a woman. Not human. No. The creature and her long red hair, her redbloom-rot hair. Geralt is a Witcher, he knows all the monsters. He is not unfamiliar. He knows she bears only death and misfortune. </p><p>(There's a old lullaby, lost across the years. Geralt fishes for it now. <em>One man sees a riselka, his life forks there. Two men see a riselka, one of them shall die. Three men see a riselka, one is blessed, one forks, and one of them shall die.) </em></p><p>How do you get a riselka? They are not born there, deep in the sea. No, they are made by their own deaths. If you drown, you see, the water might keep you. You might not get away. (That doesn't mean you get to breathe.) She is very beautiful in a soulscreeching way. Do not go near. Geralt blinks and she’s gone. No one in the water. Nothing but moonlight. <em>A riselka. </em>(He knows, he knows. His mother had warned him about drowning weather and hungry hands.)</p><p>Down the shore a bit, an old man has a tarp laid out. Knives out and ropes dropped in coils. A shallow-bottomed boat hiked up onto the sand. A pile of fish in front of him. He’s gutting and fileting them with his soft knife, bending the steel there against the bones. A pile of good meat. A pile of guts and ribs too. Geralt had fixed him with a rock-cut stare. The fisherman had glared, huffing, going back to knifing dead things.</p><p>
  <em>Did you see it? Did you see the damn thing? (Did anyone else?) </em>
</p><p>He had seen the creature, so misfortune must loom. <em>What's new? </em>He has been waiting for it with two swords kept at the ready. And here, in this shitfuck tavern, here it is. Geralt looks up now, watching misfortune open the pub door with rain in his brown hair and a lute under one arm.</p><p>
  <em>Well, fuck my fucking life. </em>
</p><p>"Er, hello," Jaskier says, dropping into the chair next to him. His eyes bright, something of the stars in them. His skin pale and his smile as beautiful as catastrophe. That wide, easy smile. His doublet is the color of spilled wine and he smells like cheap soap and sandalwood. Geralt shifts a little, discomfited by the spread of tanned skin next to him. By the proximity of hair the color of tree bark. Eyes that strange quicksilver, the color of a quiet sea on an overcast day.</p><p>
  <em>You shouldn't be here.</em>
</p><p>"Door's that way," Geralt mutters. (He tries not to look at the red of Jaskier's mouth. No, don't imagine blood painting it darker. Blood staining the teeth, a throat closing up by a crushing unseen fist, a phantom death - do not think about it.)</p><p>"What?" Jaskier blinks.</p><p>"Piss off." </p><p>"You really haven't changed, have you?" The question lilts in quiet, practiced humor. Jaskier has never taken the bait. "Didn't you miss my sparkling personality?"</p><p>Geralt grunts. "Get out of here."</p><p>And now, here. There's still lager on his tongue. And Jaskier is next to him, wood-brown hair creeping out over his collar. <em>Stay there, let it cool there. Become basalt for me, cool enough to the touch and unmoving. Stay there. Let me. </em>Geralt says nothing, pressing his mouth into a line, breathing in. He tightens his grip on the glass.</p><p>"Hmm, no, you know, I rather think I'll stay," Jaskier says, arching an eyebrow and moving to signal for a pint. </p><p><em>Have it your way. </em>Geralt presses his mouth into a thin, sharp line. It's a quick movement to pull his gear from the seat, to swing up and head for his room. Borrowed for a few pieces of silver, borrowed for one night only. </p><p>He's not surprised when footsteps follow him. His words come in a gravel-torn growl. "What do you want?"</p><p>"Just been awhile, Witcher," Jaskier says, hesitating in the open door to the room. For once, for fucking once, he looks uncertain. His weight shifting from hip to slim hip, his lyre hung forgotten across his back. For once, there is no song playing. Blessed silence reigns in the empty room. No melody to get tangled in, no lyrics sung (songs he is expected to know by heart, songs he does not know). "I wanted to apologize. For the dijnn thing. I shouldn't have, well - "</p><p>"No, you shouldn't."</p><p>"Bit of an idiot move."</p><p><em>An idiot move. An idiot move. An idiot move that nearly cost you your goddamn life. That nearly got you fucking killed.  </em><em>Shut up, shut the fuck up. Don't you dare bring it up. Don't you dare talk about it. </em>His own mind is traitor enough, remembering Jaskier sprawled out on the ground, clutching at his own throat. Red on his tongue, staining his teeth, spit up like a consumptive on the floor.</p><p>“Yet, you’re alive.” Geralt crosses his arms. His fingernails dig into the meat of his own skin. His bleak coat. <em>Why are you here? </em>He doesn't know what keeps bringing Jaskier back into his life, dragging him in like a wet dog from the rain. Maybe it's just simple chaos or shit luck. Doesn't matter. Geralt had turned down every road, hoping to find it empty. Left the forwarding address blank. <em>Don't follow me. </em>(He hadn't written that. Not in so many words. It had seemed self-evident.) <em>Don't follow me. (Why the hell are you standing here?)</em></p><p>“That’s what they tell me!" Jaskier laughs, or tries to. He edges further into the room, nudging the door shut behind him. "Can’t feel my toes yet, but I’ve looked. They’re all there, I counted them.” </p><p>Geralt's hands tighten into impossible fists. His knuckles white, the bones trying to cut through his own skin. His mouth a thin red line, his teeth clenched enough to hurt, punishing his own mouth. “You stupid <em>fucking </em>idiot,” Geralt hisses. “You could have been <em>killed.</em>”</p><p>Somehow he is pushing forward, his hands moving upward and his fists finding homes in the mess of Jaskier's tunic. There's a hiss on his tongue and fury carves across his face. Across the sharp bridge of his nose and the shovel-cut of his jaw. There in his snake-venom yellow eyes and dropped dark brows. He grabs Jaskier's lithe form and presses him up against the white blank space of a wall. </p><p>Noses close, faces close. Jaskier's heartbeat is loud under his hands, a xylophone against a ribcage, beating out Geralt's own damnation. (It turns out that you can set ruin to music.)</p><p>Jaskier's eyes are very wide. When he speaks, his warm breath grazes Geralt's skin. Up close, he smells like wool and sweat. Cedar trunks, open air. Jaskier parts his lips, hesitating. His eyes chance at Geralt's mouth and back up again. “If you push me harder into this wall," he breathes, "I might be.”</p><p>“Don’t tempt me.” (Don't think about it, this twitch of the carotid, that soft mouth. Red again. Red always. Torn from his throat, red in his mouth.)</p><p>“Sorry for interrupting your - <em>fishing. </em>Your witchering. Important business, that,” Jaskier says, his eyes sharp and terribly bright. “Can’t have me getting in the way.”</p><p>“That’s not what -“ Geralt keeps his mouth shut. <em>Keep your damn mouth shut. I'll keep mine shut. </em></p><p>“Isn’t it?” Jaskier asks it quietly, cupping the words carefully in a soft voice.</p><p>Silence. The language of stone, the language of walls. (Don't look for answers here.)</p><p>“Let me go,” Jaskier says. His chest is shivering under Geralt's constant touch, their shared breath. This recycled air, in one lung and out the other. Unnoticed. Necessary. Jaskier says <em>let me go </em>in a half-whisper while watching Geralt watch him, while making no move to break free. </p><p>
  <em>(Then go.)</em>
</p><p>“So you can find more trouble to drag me into?” Geralt's voice is hushed and dipped in poison. Words coated in hellebore, words like arrowheads.</p><p>“You drag yourself into it, Witcher.” Jaskier lifts his chin, something proud and defiant. There's a challenge in the look, in the half-raised brow and the heavily-lidded eyes. “Don’t you?”</p><p>“It finds me,” he hisses.</p><p>Jaskier licks his impossible lower lip, not even having the decency to look away. “Does it?”</p><p>A grunt. </p><p>“What kind of trouble?” The question is soft, the stare isn’t. “Would you say has found you now, Witcher?”</p><p>“You.” <em>You’re trouble. You’re always finding me. (You never let me go.) </em></p><p>“I’m not trouble.”</p><p>“Aren’t you?” Geralt bites off. “Throwing yourself at a bottle, getting a goddamn dijnn down your fucking throat -“</p><p>“You were <em>worried</em>.” The pale eyes widen. Disbelief scribbled across the other man's face.</p><p>“I don’t worry.”</p><p>“<em>I</em> worry,” Jaskier says, his voice is soft yet his words are terribly loud. “When I don’t hear from you. When I hear rumors about a battle, a monster, someone dead in a fight - I worry. About you.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>Long-fingered hands, made to string lyres and pick lutes, smooth across Geralt's chest. There is a measure of silence. Then, comes the quiet voice. “Don’t you know by now?”</p><p>Geralt’s hands are still in Jaskier’s tunic, still clutching at the dusty red fabric. His knuckles white against it. Quiet reigns for an age, monarchies rise and fall and Geralt stands there, his breath rough and his hands still in a fucking white-knuckled clench. “Bad idea.”</p><p>“I know,” Jaskier says quietly. “Witchers don’t love.”</p><p>“No. They don’t.”</p><p>“But they <em>can</em>, can’t they?” Jaskier’s eyes keep his own very steady, looking up at Geralt. He blames magnets for this, blames gravity. He wants to look away. He does not look away. (Jaskier has always had impossible eyes and clever ears. Has always seen too much and heard too much. No one walks up to the stone but him, no one walks up to the wall but Jaskier, asking what it holds. <em>Tell me what's inside, </em>Jaskier seems to ask, knowing all walls keep something within.) “Bit of a key difference there, I find.”</p><p>Geralt glares. (He doesn’t know what else to do.)</p><p>“What I can do is different than what I should do.”</p><p>There have been moments where his clay has been too brittle, where he has nearly broken. Jaskier’s easy touch and easier laugh, an arm draped over his shoulder. Each time, Geralt had tightened his jaw and bit the inside of his cheek until blood had filled it. Salt and iron on his tongue, a recipe for disaster. </p><p><em>I love you. (There’s nothing there to offer. Love like an empty cup. An invitation to a bad party. I can’t invite you in, offer you my shit heart like a terrible host.) </em>A fact: the human body is composed of seventy-percent water. He looks at Jaskier, at all the water making up his skin and blood, there in the cells of him too. These awful thoughts. <em>Let me drain you, let me drink you. I want to suck all the water out of you and swallow it down. You can never be too deep inside me. If I drink you, you will be my blood, my bones, my skin, my hair. Let me drink you. (I should not think this.) </em></p><p>Jaskier there, pressed against a plaster wall. His chin lifted and a challenge in his eyes,<em> I love you </em>still lingering on his lips like drops of wine and fuck, does Geralt want to kiss it off, to taste the sound of it on his tongue. The pale skin, the blue-lit eyes, the soft hair. (It looks soft. Geralt wants to touch it.)</p><p>"Do you always do what you should do?" Jaskier asks. "Do you - Do you think - "</p><p>"Can you ever finish a <em>goddamn </em>sentence?"</p><p>Jaskier stands slack-jawed for a moment, his dark brow arching. Then, there's a quirk. Something of a smile. He kisses Geralt. He kisses Geralt with his hands coming up to surround the severe face, hands cupping the sharp jaw and in the bone-white hair, snaking down his face and his neck like spilled ink. </p><p>"What the hell are you doing?" Geralt asks, not moving away. Looking down at Jaskier's tilted-up face. His hands have found Jaskier's arms, gripping him tightly. <em>What the hell are you doing? (Do it again.) </em>Jaskier's breath is warm against him, warm against the chill air.</p><p>"I - Well, I think it's pretty obvious."</p><p>Geralt swallows. They've been so <em>good </em>at ignoring this. Now Jaskier's gone and ruined it. Like a wave against a sandcastle, crashing on in and not giving a damn. </p><p>"You - We can't. There's <em>nothing</em> -"</p><p>"There hasn't been<em> nothing </em>ever," Jaskier says. "And you know it."</p><p>"Don't you think I had reasons?" Geralt hisses, tightening his fingers, digging them in further. <em>Fuck, I need you. Fuck. </em>(He doesn't want to need. To need is to leave a window open. To leave a door unlatched. <em>Need</em> leaves a back alley for something to creep in, leave you compromised. He doesn't want to need. To be needed.) </p><p>God, he is so fucking hard. Aching, pressed into Jaskier's thin hip, Jaskier rough and hard against him in turn. Wanting and wanted. </p><p>Jaskier rolls his eyes, pushing in harder. His hair is wild and messy and still damp. <em>I want to touch it. I want to get my hands in it. On you. You'll let me, won't you? (You shouldn't. I'll never stop.) </em>Geralt's own breathing is coming more quickly than he'd like. Pay attention to the timing, to the expansion of the lungs. Count with me. <em>One two three four. </em>(All that time, counting out his breathing, focused only on the other man's hair.)</p><p>"Yeah, it's a bad idea," Jaskier admits, pressing a kiss into Geralt's neck, hiding it behind his ear. "And I don't give a fuck." </p><p>Geralt looks away. There's heat in his neck and the words too. He hopes the collar hides them. <em>How do you pull the truth out? Like a splinter in the skin. </em></p><p>"Fuck," Geralt hisses. "You - "  It's dangerous. He moves forward, his face burning. He is ruined at the admission of his own want. His pride all tangled up in heartstrings, furious and angry and embarrassed to even let Jaskier in his goddamn room.</p><p>Relief comes like a dove over the storm. A mouth. On his. Touch. Soft. <em>I want you I want you I want you. Fuck. </em></p><p>"Yeah, well, same," Jaskier breathes. (Oh shit, has he been saying that out loud?) "Fuck, I might explode, you know. I've been thinking about this for -"</p><p>Geralt bites off the rest of the sentence. Catches it in his starving mouth. <em>Yes, god, yes, please. Forever. I have dreamt about you forever. You'll ruin me. Touch me. Please.</em></p><p>"Move," he manages. "Bed." His voice is low enough to trip over things. The bed is big enough to bear witness to them both. A straw mattress and simple linens, both good at keeping secrets. They fall against it.</p><p>Jaskier's hands trace along Geralt's throat, bare now and obvious. There's nothing to hide him, nothing to catch and conceal him. He's a stain on the bed, he will spill out. He's afraid for his neck, afraid for his mouth. Jaskier kisses the carotid there, the divot at the base. Mouths over the starburst scar on his shoulder, the rope-lines of it, where it had snaked out, ruining and necrotic. "I can't imagine how awful this felt," Jaskier says. </p><p>"Then don't."<em> Do I need to spell it out? How it feels when your skin is torn, the slip of blood from your veins, your carotid artery. (No, I remember the blood in your mouth. I don't need to tell you.) </em></p><p>Jaskier is a clever man with clever hands. Geralt is hot under his fingers, teased by a light touch, a suggestion more than a reality. </p><p>"I need to see you." It's a long-standing need. A need that's been shoved into the back of the closet, an unpaid bill of a need, collecting up with past due charges. Now it's here, hard in his fist and written in red. He needs to see Jaskier, to see Jaskier's body laid out willingly on this bed before him. Geralt bites the inside of his cheek, grits his jaw, trying to staunch the flow of want that pours out of him. </p><p><em>I want to take you. Gather you up. Split you apart. </em>Geralt could hold Jaskier safe in his arms, could make a cave of his own body as he lowers himself over Jaskier and the mattress too, sound in his clutching hands. <em>I wouldn't hurt you. </em>(He is afraid of his own want, his strength. He doesn't know where the edges are, where he might find them. In the dark, he sees Jaskier on that godforsaken shore and spitting up blood. All this blood in his mouth and none of it was Geralt's. <em>Sorry about the blood in your mouth, I wish it were mine</em>.) </p><p>His eyes are hot as Jaskier bites his lip, slowly shifting under Geralt's questioning hands. He knocks at doors, seeing what he can find. A nipple, teased with a tongue to pebble hardness. Stomach muscles ripple below his fingers, hips twitch with a touch buried in the curls between his thighs. Geralt doesn't talk. Doesn't know how to find the words, to drag language to the surface. Words, for the silent, are a second language. Geralt moves wordlessly against Jaskier, their cocks as hot as a forest fire between them, dragging against sticky bellies and impatient hands. </p><p>
  <em>I want to be inside you.</em>
</p><p>He wants to split Jaskier open. That lingers too, there past the vision of blood. An older story, an ancient image. The other man laid out and gasping, ripe as a peach and split to the stone of him. Geralt would open him like taking a bite, his fingers pulling him apart, his mouth working at the seam. <em>God, I want to fuck you. </em>To fuck, to possess, to take, to claim. </p><p>To keep. (To love.) Witchers don't get to keep things. Don't get to stay in one place. (Don't get to love.)</p><p>
  <em>Sorry about the blood in your mouth. </em>
</p><p>"I want you to fuck me," Jaskier whispers, gasping into the spaces between them. Witchers don't shiver, so Geralt doesn't shiver. (Perhaps something inside of him does. Deep in his body, his spine shakes a little, uncertain, remembering who he was before he was a Witcher, when he was young and clean.) </p><p>"Lie back."</p><p>"Fuck," Jaskier moans at Geralt's touch, at the pressure of his hands against Jaskier's narrow hips, pressing his small frame against the linens. The bed takes him and Geralt is there, a storm door on top, built to withstand. Sometimes even the wall needs to taste the garden, to look and see what it's protecting, to borrow a little beauty against its weathered stone. </p><p>He is a wall, built to keep everything out. To be firm, solid. No one ever asked the stones what they wanted to be, a temple or a fortress. No one asked him if he wanted to transmute from human to something else, to <em>whatever-this-is</em>, this <em>don't-come-close-I'll-cut-you</em>. Jaskier's hands weave into him like ivy. Growth is the ultimate entropy. Think of the ancient pasts, their temples and statues eroded to nothing by wind and by sand. Think of castles disarticulated like a corpse nosed at by wolves. The stones taken apart by creeping vines, pushing leaves. No one escapes erosion. </p><p>All things come apart. All walls keep something in. Keep something safe. Here is the garden spilling out, here is the temple rebuilt. Keep quiet, don't spill over. Don't make a mess. He grits his teeth when he sinks his cock into Jaskier, there between spread-wide thighs, with a furiously-hot cock rubbing against his own belly. Mind the hands, mind the grip. Geralt knows his strength is more than human and he keeps it bottled up within him, his eyes on Jaskier's pale skin. <em>Don't bruise him. Don't, don't fuck it up. </em>He's silent and holds Jaskier in his desperate grip like a tame wolf might keep your head between its teeth, trying not to bite. Trying not to let go.</p><p>
  <em>"Harder." </em>
</p><p>"No," Geralt hisses, his hips snapping forward. He fucks. He fucks and fucks and fucks, burying himself deep in the warmth of Jaskier's body. Wet and desperate around him, holding him together. They are only atoms. Only little bits of nothing, the same nothing, strung together on different patterns. They are made of the same material, the same starstuff. </p><p><em>I love you. </em>Caught in his throat, between his teeth. As dangerous as a chickenbone. It's complicated, love. Before we fall in love, when our pages are yet unwritten, we assume that love is the easiest story of all. <em>You'll know it when you get there, </em>we say, telling ourselves lies. <em>When you feel it, you'll just have to say it, </em>we say, as if a little white lie won't do any harm. The wanting comes in waves and the love tumbles in too. Love is as complicated as everything else, making lover's knots of our veins and capillaries. We choke on it, uncertain if we're right or wrong, uncertain if we should spill it like a cup of wine on our beloved's white shirt. <em>Oh dear, </em>we might say, <em>I got myself on you. </em></p><p>"I love - " Jaskier cries, his face turned and half-buried in the punched-up pillow. Geralt kisses him, leaning down and biting the words from his mouth to silence them. Building a wall of teeth and tongue to keep it in, to keep it in and not let it out in the open where he cannot watch it, where it could run wild, do damage. </p><p><em>I love you. </em>It echoes in Geralt's mouth, catching like a lump in his throat. He swallows it down. Unsaid and understood. <em>You don't have to tell me. </em></p><p>"Can I?" He asks. He always asks. Man or woman beneath him, doesn't matter. </p><p>"God, yes." Jaskier wraps his thin, cord-muscled calves around Geralt's whiplash hips, sinking him further in. Keeping him deep and wanted. Wanted for once. Kept for once. See him here, a wanderer with no address to call home, scribbling his name in gentle marks on the parchment of Jaskier's skin. Nowhere to go but here, nowhere to feel quiet but here, silent in the deep, held close. He had thought he would wrap around Jaskier, keep him safe. Keep the blood out of his mouth, give shelter from the storm. Here, buried deep within Jaskier's open, gasping, snapping body, Geralt knows nothing so well as him. <em>I love you, I love you, I love you. You, who never fucking listen. Who just shows up anywhere I am. As if you're drawn to me. As if you're mine, as if I'm yours. (I need you. You need me.) </em>His cock runs deep, fucking up into Jaskier furiously. He learns the measure of Jaskier's body. The temperature of his skin wrapped around him, the exact measure and pressure of his form held in Geralt's half-shattering grip. He can count the vertebrae, the orgasm climbing them in Jaskier's skin, one by one by one. </p><p><em>"I want you," </em>Jaskier gasps. (It means so much more.) He cries out then to the night, eyes clenched and fingers desperately dug into Geralt's shoulder, coming hot between their bodies. </p><p><em>"Fuck," </em>Geralt hisses, the electricity sparking in his crown, overflowing his veins. He punches his hips forward, deep deep deep into Jaskier's beloved, body, held there like a homecoming and his eyes sham-shut, white light sparking across his vision. White light like the dawn, like staring into the sun. A prayer of white light and white heat. He screams a silent scream and Jaskier pulls him into a kiss, capturing the wordlessness and translating it all. Understanding it all. </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>"And yet ... here we are."</em>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>A thin arm wraps around his shoulders. Gentle lips press a blameless kiss into his sweat-damp hair. </p><p>"Can I stay?" Jaskier whispers. "For tonight?" An echo hides behind the words, knocking against them. Creeping like ivy. <em>Can I stay forever?</em></p><p>"Tonight," Geralt says in a half-lost kiss. The night is strange and endless, the night promises forever. There are many tonights. This one and the next one. Yes. Yes. Stay tonight. And tomorrow night, which will be tonight soon. There, beating heart against beating heart, he closes his warning-yellow eyes, exhaling into the woven fabric of the flat, rented pillow. <em>Don't follow me. Don't come in after. Don't let me drag you down. (</em>Behind his eyes, there is the faint flame-haired vision of a woman in the water, waving to him. One man sees a riselka, his path forks there.) </p><p>"I can move," he murmurs there into the dark. "I'm heavy."</p><p>"No," Jaskier whispers. (Geralt cannot see him, not here in the dark. The candles have long since burnt down. The night covers them like a blanket.) "No, you're not too heavy at all."</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Reuploaded after I'd removed it once.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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